Communist architecture in Slovakia 1 (Spectacular Slovakia)

If one judges structure by whether or not folks need to name it residence, then Petržalka would not work.

That is an article from our archive of travel guides Spectacular Slovakia. We determined to make this gem obtainable to our readers, making solely needed changes. A number of the author’s observations from the yr 2004 have modified however a lot nonetheless holds true. For up-to-date data and have tales, check out the most recent version of our Bratislava City Guide.

Lost in Bratislava? Impossible with this City Guide! (Source: Spectacular Slovakia)

No dialogue of Slovak structure can cross over what occurred within the second half of the 20^thcentury.

Communist-era rulers, to a good higher diploma than post-war metropolis planners within the west, embraced a form of anti-aesthetic, with utility and thrift the supreme values. A vulgarized type of functionalism held sway: the fundamental form for organizing human life grew to become the oblong block. The distinction to the self-aggrandizing aptitude of the outdated royal elite couldn’t have been clearer. Equally stark was the break from the vernacular types favoured by village-dwelling peasants for hundreds of years.

Because the Slovak a part of Czechoslovakia industrialized quickly within the 1950s and 1960s, villagers migrated in droves to cities. The most cost effective and quickest technique to accommodate them was to assemble towering blocks of flats, clumped collectively in order that important companies may very well be delivered to them as effectively as potential. Thus in almost each Slovak metropolis, you see stunning old-town squares ringed by modernist jungles of tower blocks.

Bratislava in all probability presents the starkest instance, though the competitors is fierce. Enter town, as so many foreigners do, on the street from Vienna, and the very first thing you see is Petržalka, an unlimited, undifferentiated mass of off-white tower blocks, plunked down south of the Danube throughout from the outdated city. The federal government reportedly constructed the complicated as a quick-fix to a inhabitants growth. Many years later, Petržalka is a everlasting a part of the panorama. It homes 150,000 folks – greater than a 3rd of Bratislava’s inhabitants. Its suicide fee is the nation’s highest. Certainly, Petržalka represents an enormous failure of architectural creativeness.

A couple of hundred meters away, throughout the river, lies the comparatively tiny Outdated City, packed filled with architectural treasures from the previous.

There are numerous vistas in Bratislava that lay naked its bipolar structure. Beginning on the Presidential Palace, stroll down Staromestská ulica towards the river. On the left looms the spire of St. Martin’s Cathedral, coronation church of the kings and queens of Hungary for 250 years. On the fitting is the stately Bratislava Fortress. Between the 2, an odd object floats, like a ’50s-movie flying saucer. It is the café atop the help beams of New Bridge, constructed within the 1970s-era functionalist frenzy that noticed the creation of Petržalka.

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The brand new bridge was constructed to hyperlink Petržalka to the remainder of Bratislava. It is building required the destruction of 226 buildings in Outdated City, together with a synagogue. The four-lane street it feeds is squeezed between the citadel and cathedral. The street’s vibrations are steadily damaging the cathedral, certainly one of Slovakia’s Gothic treasures.

There is a level when functionalism turns into its reverse: dysfunctionalism. If one judges structure by whether or not folks need to name it residence, then Petržalka would not work. The New Bridge, the development of which sliced the Outdated City in two, is a everlasting blunder, a testomony to the conceitedness and blindness of unchecked energy.

Not every bit of post-war structure in Slovakia is contemptible. The practice station in Poprad, for instance, takes a lot of abuse. Chris Togneri, a former Spectacular editor, referred to as it “an ominous, rusty construction hovering… above the tracks.”

I had a distinct impression. The practice station works. Whenever you stroll out onto the road, you already know the place the city heart lies. Whenever you await a practice, the sunny, glass-walled overpass presents a nice view over the tracks. The Poprad practice station, unadorned although it’s, provides you the sensation that you’re someplace.

The practice station in Prešov, in contrast, is a examine in dysfunctionalism. The tracks lie on avenue degree, but the station’s designers noticed match to herd passengers downstairs, right into a dim, labyrinth that connects the practice and bus stations. For the disabled or these carrying heavy baggage, being pressured up and down stairs is an insult. Exits from the maze are marked however do not point out which path results in the city heart. “The place am I?” you ask as you muddle by the crowds. The reply is similar in all of the world’s functionalism-gone-awry areas: I’m nowhere.